The INQUIRER - powered by top surgeons at Harefield Hospital
|
|
|
Acer Lumiread to reach Europe in 2011
HAVE SUIT WILL CARRY the Acer Lumiread e-book reader whose form factor has been designed for a suit jacket's pockets according to the manufacturer.
Speaking with The INQUIRER at Computex 2010, Acer said its International Standard Book Number bar code reading e-reader will reach Europe, and likely Germany and Italy first, in 2011. The US will be the initial English language market with a late 2010 availability at the earliest. For the US market the company says it has a deal with bookseller Barnes and Noble. The third initial market for the e-reader will be China.
Two models will be available worldwide; one has only an Acer InviLink WiFi 802.11 b/g WLAN and the other 3G and the same WiFi system. Other than that they are powered by a Freescale LMX357 processor and use a Linux operating system. The 118mm wide and 10.3mm thick device has an 800x600 6-inch TFT display, 128MB of DDR 133MHz memory, 2GB of flash, a microSD card reader, a 37-key QWERTY keyboard and weighs 285g for the 3G model, 250g for WiFi only.
"Its dimensions are slimmer than the Kindle," Acer told The INQUIRER, adding rather strangely, "you can use [the Lumiread] with one hand".
The Lumiread has the recognisable easy-on-the-eyes black and white appearance of an e-reader and like its Amazon.com rival it won't have a colour version with pretty pictures.
The company sees the Lumiread's bar code reader as a unique selling point as users can scan friend's book's ISBN number and then buy the text online. µ
Share this:
Share
I've just ordered one, I think it will be very useful to me. I often read books in foreign languages and downloading ebooks will be much easier than having the paper edition shipped to Italy...
You are missing something, namely the ability to carry multiple books with you and have them available at any time, plus the ability to quickly search the book you're looking at. These are important capabilities to a person working in a technical area with lots of printed material. Otherwise he'd have to carry a few hundred books around. Not very practical.
I must be missing something but why do we need e-readers in the first place? Why not just buy the damned book?
It's cheaper, it's not DRM'd to the gills and you can lend it to a friend to read.
That keyboard makes it too bulky.
...you can download a copy of any book... if you have the book already.
FAIL.
Scan my groceries for me at home and build me a shopping list, or a home delivery, and we'll talk about that.